The Gaming Den

No it's not. Frank's CO2 argument is based on the Sulfur Argument. I know that argument. That argument is a friend of mine. I live about 5-8 hours from Upstate New York. I know all about the acid rain problem and how it did what it did. (Sulfur in the atmosphere precipitates in the rain water, causing the water to become acidic. This in turn kills freshwater fish in rivers and ponds as well as attacks the basic limestone sediment of those rivers and ponds. This polution was almost entirely caused by a few specific sources in states west of New York and New England.

So the "cause" of the polution is the acidity of the chemical; completely different from when it is in massive concentrations (as in the case of sulfur sources such as hot springs) and in insane concentrations (as in the case he cited in Mexico). More over the casue and effect is clear and obvious.

In fact, I never bothered to mention the "Interstate" problem. This was a dispute between western and north-eastern states. Clearly a federal requirement was required.

Everything that was true about the legislative regulations of sulfur dioxide emissions is missing from the CO2 argument. Frank knows this, he's just being his usuial dipshit about it. There is no "cause and effect" for an adverse impact on the environment. There is no argument that the sources you are regulating are the most significant cause of those emissions (natural CO2 emissions still trumnps man-made) and there is no "Interstate" argument involved. CO2 is not a polution and that is clear to any casual observer. His arugment is that CO2 is a polutant simply because it is a greenhouse gas, which is nonsense at face value.

Frank often does this, he pulls arguments out of his butt that have only the most insane connection to the subject at hand. (Like the notion that the Federal Government has the right to foce everyone to buy health insurance because George Washington was given the authority to draft everyone into the militia and require them to purchase their own equipment.)

I would just like to end my point by consulting the good book (consult the Morocco Bound Tome) of Merriam - Webster

pollutant wrote:something that pollutes : a polluting substance, medium, or agent

pollute wrote:to make physically impure or unclean : BEFOUL, DIRTY, TAINT

Please tell me how CO2 is a "pollutant." It's not.

Okay. So you don't like how Frank is comparing Sulfur and CO2. How does that make your water analogy any less wrong? Why would the EPA limit water in bottles?

Also, I am still curious what the fundamental difference is between congress requiring everyone to buy health insurance and George Washington requiring everyone to buy their own weapons. It seems there's a precedence for the government requiring you to buy things.

tzor wrote:(Like the notion that the Federal Government has the right to foce everyone to buy health insurance because George Washington was given the authority to draft everyone into the militia and require them to purchase their own equipment.)

That reminds me. Tzor, are you in favor of privatizing social security?

RobbyPants wrote:Also, I am still curious what the fundamental difference is between congress requiring everyone to buy health insurance and George Washington requiring everyone to buy their own weapons. It seems there's a precedence for the government requiring you to buy things.

As I mentioned eariler; the former was supposed to be possible through the massive abuse of the interstate commerce clause; the later was through the President's authority as "commander in chief" of the armed services (including the militias).

angelfromanotherpin wrote:That reminds me. Tzor, are you in favor of privatizing social security?

Not really. When you come down to it, it seems like a gimic to me. First and foremost, we need a real personalized reqirement system, where people can put in a decent amount of their income and reserve it for their retirement. IRA accounts are pathetic, one literally needs a 401K system available for everyone.

But that's not the real issue with privitation. Social Security is not like other government based pension systems (such as CalPERS) in that it is limited by law in terms of what it can invest. This investment has led to a wink wink nudge nudge arrangement with the Federal Government, the only place the system can invest. The result, as the late Senator Moyahan once said was "embezzlement." The notion, however that you could divert those funds into the hands of the people who could instead place them in more high paying (risky) investments is playing a shell game with funds.

I don't want to invest the government's (or technically the fund's) money. I want to invest my own money. One can argue that Social Security might benefit from a CalPERS approach, but that requires trustees who have in interest to get the best return as safely possible and who know what they are doing. It's why the bulk of my requirement accounts are in FUNDS and are not managed by me day trading all the time.

I'm as conservative as they come, except of course when it comes to social security. It's a clear ponzi scheme but that doesn't mean it doesn't have it's good points. I'm clearly not counting on it being MY source of retirement income in the future. But I'm willing to help the people NOW on the system and I hope that the workers of the future will still be able to help those who truely need the system when I no longer contribute to it.

RobbyPants wrote: Why would the EPA limit water in bottles?

Side note:

Unless you sell the bottles across state lines, no one monitors water in bottles. If you sell across state lines, the FDA checks a sample a couple of times a month.

Tap water is monitored by the department of health, and samples are tested several times a day.

Also, most bottled water is usually manufactured by soda factories, and are pretty much the same water they use for the soda except without any ingredients. (Dasani is owned by Coca-Cola. Aquafina is owned by Pepsi.)

tzor wrote:natural CO2 emissions still trumnps man-made

The difference is that natural CO2 emissions are balanced by natural CO2 absorption (photosynthesis and oceanic absorption, mainly). Human activities (burning fossil fuels, deforestation) are producing more CO2 and simultaneously diminishing the natural absorption rate.

By Tzor's logic, since natural sunlight produces more heat than man-made fires, arson cannot possibly be a problem and should not be regulated.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:By Tzor's logic, since natural sunlight produces more heat than man-made fires, arson cannot possibly be a problem and should not be regulated.

-Username17

Only Frank would even consider regulating arson because of the threat of GLOBAL WAMRING.

You know the old saying about people who live in glass houses?

They are, in general less worried about arson than those who live in wooden ones.

Not that I'm complaining, because I'm used to being thrown a curveball, but the spitball was banned decades ago. Stop drooling on the ball.

What the fuck, Tzor? Daiba's right. Frank is just making fun of you based on that. It doesn't matter if the natural world is dumping more CO2 in the air than we are. It also absorbs a like amount. The fact that we are adding less doesn't negate the effect that we are creating a net gain.

There's nothing to indicate that the natural world is creating more CO2 than it was a century ago. We, however, have increased our CO2 output.

RobbyPants wrote:What the fuck, Tzor? Daiba's right. Frank is just making fun of you based on that. It doesn't matter if the natural world is dumping more CO2 in the air than we are. It also absorbs a like amount. The fact that we are adding less doesn't negate the effect that we are creating a net gain.

There's nothing to indicate that the natural world is creating more CO2 than it was a century ago. We, however, have increased our CO2 output.

Nothing? You mean it's been a galactic constant over the course of the planet's history? True it's hard to measure the input and output of CO2 over the course of geologic time as the only real measure is the delta which is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. And that's a constant, right, (praise Gore) ... or is it?

Wiki wrote:Ice cores provide evidence for variation in greenhouse gas concentrations over the past 800,000 years. Both CO2 and CH4 vary between glacial and interglacial phases, and concentrations of these gases correlate strongly with temperature. Direct data does not exist for periods earlier than those represented in the ice core record, a record which indicates CO2 levels staying within a range of between 180ppm and 280ppm throughout the last 800,000 years, until the increase of the last 250 years. However, various proxies and modeling suggests larger variations in past epochs; 500 million years ago CO2 levels were likely 10 times higher than now.[16] Indeed higher CO2 concentrations are thought to have prevailed throughout most of the Phanerozoic eon, with concentrations four to six times current concentrations during the Mesozoic era, and ten to fifteen times current concentrations during the early Palaeozoic era until the middle of the Devonian period, about 400 Ma.[17][18][19] The spread of land plants is thought to have reduced CO2 concentrations during the late Devonian, and plant activities as both sources and sinks of CO2 have since been important in providing stabilising feedbacks.[20] Earlier still, a 200-million year period of intermittent, widespread glaciation extending close to the equator (Snowball Earth) appears to have been ended suddenly, about 550 Ma, by a colossal volcanic outgassing which raised the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere abruptly to 12%, about 350 times modern levels, causing extreme greenhouse conditions and carbonate deposition as limestone at the rate of about 1 mm per day.[21] This episode marked the close of the Precambrian eon, and was succeeded by the generally warmer conditions of the Phanerozoic, during which multicellular animal and plant life evolved. No volcanic carbon dioxide emission of comparable scale has occurred since. In the modern era, emissions to the atmosphere from volcanoes are only about 1% of emissions from human sources.[21][22]

tzor wrote:

RobbyPants wrote:What the fuck, Tzor? Daiba's right. Frank is just making fun of you based on that. It doesn't matter if the natural world is dumping more CO2 in the air than we are. It also absorbs a like amount. The fact that we are adding less doesn't negate the effect that we are creating a net gain.

There's nothing to indicate that the natural world is creating more CO2 than it was a century ago. We, however, have increased our CO2 output.

Nothing? You mean it's been a galactic constant over the course of the planet's history? True it's hard to measure the input and output of CO2 over the course of geologic time as the only real measure is the delta which is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. And that's a constant, right, (praise Gore) ... or is it?

I said century. Right in that part you quoted. Since, you know, we weren't pumping out fuck tons of CO2 before the industrial revolution.

RobbyPants wrote:I said century. Right in that part you quoted. Since, you know, we weren't pumping out fuck tons of CO2 before the industrial revolution.

The point remains, not only is the amount of carbom emitted and absorbed significantly more over the course of geologic time, the damn standard deviation has been far more than those "fuck tons of CO2" you claim are destroying the planet (heck I have volcanoes that farted more than that). You would think if we were to dump "fuck tons of CO2" the earth would start to do something about it, because after all, life didn't get extinguished the last time a volcano farted. Oh wait, it is ...

[url=http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=30506]Causes and Consequences of Forest Growth Trends in Europe [/url] wrote:Forest growth in Europe has been increasing during the last decades. The possible causes suggested to explain this have been increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, improved temperature and precipitation climate, increasing nitrogen deposition and better management. In this book complementary approaches are used to discriminate between the importance of each of these factors. Investigations over large geographical areas are used to separate current variability while detailed studies of the growth of individual trees allow historical trends to be evaluated. Four different mechanistic forest ecosystem models supplement the empirical investigations.

The major cause of the observed growth increase is attributed to the increased nitrogen availability. In future, direct temperature effects and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration are likely to become important determinants of forest growth. Anyone interested in the future of production and health of Europe's forests should benefit form this extensive analysis of the current status and projections of forest growth.

And remember, if you want to complain about more sources, you need to complain equally about more sinks. All those people chopping down the rainforest are just as guilty in these small numbers.

tzor wrote:The point remains, not only is the amount of carbom emitted and absorbed significantly more over the course of geologic time, the damn standard deviation has been far more than those "fuck tons of CO2" you claim are destroying the planet (heck I have volcanoes that farted more than that).

The existence of prior eras in planetary history where the CO2 concentration was many times higher than it is now is pretty much irrelevant to this discussion because those periods were universally inhospitable to our civilization and the ecosystem that supports it. Unless you really enjoy being petrified by rapid carbonate deposition of limestone.

"Natural" is not always good. If, for some reason, natural CO2 absorption started to rapidly outstrip total CO2 production, threatening to throw us into an ice age, the right thing to do would be to dig up as many giant piles of hydrocarbons as we could and burn them all in an effort to maintain a friendly climate.

Let's talk about the solution two party system. Obama vs. Palin vs. Ron Paul gives the anchor for libertarian-leaning conservatives to break away from Reagan-era Republicans. People are still pissed at Obama for not pulling a rabbit out of his hat, and the majority of people don't want Palin president. Palin's press to the hard right causes a fracture among moderate Republicans, and they're left adrift. Most end up voting for Ron Paul because of the "R" next to his name. Ron Paul gains national attention and gradually becomes more and more favored among conservatives. He and Rand Paul run on a ticket together in 2016, win, and fix the United States, crushing crony capitalism and government corruption in a landslide of Constitutionalism. America rejoices and fixes all of its social problems with commonsense solutions. Ron Paul is reelected and Rand Paul wins the following two elections. With their leadership and tutelage, America enters into an age of prosperity for the next forty years as competent leaders exemplifying honesty, integrity, and conservative values steer the nation to greatness. Then, in 2072, just as some asshole is about to fuck everything up, Jesus comes back and saves the world.

WOULDN'T IT BE FUCKING GREAT.

PR, I'm going to assume that's Sarcasm. Because, if it's not you need to get some serious psychiatric help. The only thing worse for this country that Palin, would be Ron Paul. Making the US an Isolationist Libertarian nightmare would help noone except the rich.

You are factually incorrect.

You actually think that getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, All Government agencies not related to national defense, stopping all foreign aid, and basically getting rid of the Federal Government, would be a good thing for America?

You might actually be crazier than Tzor and PhoneLobster.

Psychic Robot wrote: Then, in 2072, just as some asshole is about to fuck everything up, Jesus comes back and saves the world.

WOULDN'T IT BE FUCKING GREAT.

You had me going until this line. Good show, old man!

tzor wrote: And remember, if you want to complain about more sources, you need to complain equally about more sinks. All those people chopping down the rainforest are just as guilty in these small numbers.

I never said they weren't.

tzor wrote:

RobbyPants wrote:I said century. Right in that part you quoted. Since, you know, we weren't pumping out fuck tons of CO2 before the industrial revolution.

The point remains, not only is the amount of carbom emitted and absorbed significantly more over the course of geologic time, the damn standard deviation has been far more than those "fuck tons of CO2" you claim are destroying the planet

How long are you talking about here? What's your time frame? How long does it take for the natural levels of CO2 to move up or down one standard deviation?

It's not that they go up or down that's the problem. It's how quickly they change. I mean, yes, the world can cope with certain gradual changes on it's own. It can't cope with rapid ones the same way.

RobbyPants wrote:I mean, yes, the world can cope with certain gradual changes on it's own.

It's not just the speed but also the process, natural massive climate change is not only slow but even when it IS insanely slow it involves the extinction of countless species and biomes and massive shifting of coastlines and weather patterns.

But pointing out to Tzor that being part of even a natural slow evolutionary adaption to climate change would be bad enough let alone rapid unnatural climate change...

...well I suspect that before you do that you probably need to ask him if he thinks the world is only 6000 years old and Evolution is the OTHER "big science" gravy train conspiracy...

PhoneLobster wrote:

RobbyPants wrote:I mean, yes, the world can cope with certain gradual changes on it's own.

It's not just the speed but also the process, natural massive climate change is not only slow but even when it IS insanely slow it involves the extinction of countless species and biomes and massive shifting of coastlines and weather patterns.

It's actually both, there are slow changes and rapid changes. Over the long term (actually over the medium term) the system conter balances itself well.

PhoneLobster wrote:But pointing out to Tzor that being part of even a natural slow evolutionary adaption to climate change would be bad enough let alone rapid unnatural climate change...

Once again, you are ignoring the medium term adjustments to the system. The earth is far more adaptable and self correcting than you are suggesting. We routinely have major climate changing events on the planet far greater than a simple minor increase in CO2 every century. A good volcano/imact event can throw up enough light reflecting dirt into the air to lower global termperatures by several degrees over the short term.

Yes, life on this earth is potentially dangerous. If you want I can sing the L5 society's theme songs. It's not a matter of whether, it's a matter of when.

PhoneLobster wrote:...well I suspect that before you do that you probably need to ask him if he thinks the world is only 6000 years old and Evolution is the OTHER "big science" gravy train conspiracy...

Wait a second, I thought the world was only 30 years old; built by the dolphins in their "save the humans" campaign after the original earth was destroyed by the Vogons to make way for an interstellar bypass and to prevent us from knowing the true question to the answer to life, the universe and everything.

I'm sorry, that's the knee jerk reaction from a true former astrophysicsist. Every so often I go back to R.P.I. only to find everything I previously thought shattered by new theories that try to explain (in Sherlock Holmes style) the ever growing data on the universe. (For example, the multiple universe theory to explain variations in the accelerating rate of the expansion of the universe.)


P.S. But what really does this have to do with the notion that CO2 is a pollutant and thus can be regulated by the EPA? I mean this is a lovely discussion, but somehow no one really has argued my original point. Manmade CO2 cannot "contaminate" an atmosphere with significant amounts of CO2 already in it. Minor changes in levels does not contamination make. Whether or not they should be regulated is a different question from whether or not they canb be considered a pollutant. Frank probably needed stitches for going off the deep end of an empty pool with his argument, and no one else has really given any good arguments to prove CO2 is a pollutant.

Tzor wrote:But what really does this have to do with the notion that CO2 is a pollutant and thus can be regulated by the EPA? I mean this is a lovely discussion, but somehow no one really has argued my original point. Manmade CO2 cannot "contaminate" an atmosphere with significant amounts of CO2 already in it.

There is significant amounts of Sulfur Dioxide in the atmosphere. If you add Sulfur Dioxide, you are increasing that amount. And polluting things.

Pollution doesn't just mean that you take a substance from zero to a positive number. You can also pollute things by going from some number to some higher number.

Just like you can poison people with insulin or Chromium. And rather easily at that.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:There is significant amounts of Sulfur Dioxide in the atmosphere. If you add Sulfur Dioxide, you are increasing that amount. And polluting things.

Sulfur dioxide from coal plants was not a pollutant in the air; it was in fact never absorbed into the air and precipitated out in rainfall miles away from the source sites, where in the rivers and lakes it became a pollutant. The pollutant was ACID RAIN nor ACID AIR.